The Laboratory: Florida's Education Experiments

Background

If someone has a new idea or theory about education, Florida might be the state most willing to give it a shot. Florida pioneered school choice, voucher programs, testing both student and teacher performance and other reforms now considered nationwide.

Those ideas included the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, a statewide test of math, reading and science given to elementary, middle and high schoolers. The state introduced the second generation of the test this year. Those test results carry consequences, serving as the basis for school report cards and teacher evaluations.

Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, is using a $100 million Gates Foundation grant to develop a new system to evaluate and train teachers. That system will be applied to Florida teachers statewide in 2012.

Florida voters also approved a state constitutional amendment in 2002 limiting class sizes — as few as 18 students for prekindergarten through grade 3. Voters reaffirmed the amendment in 2010, but lawmakers have exempted schools from some of the mandates due to budget cuts and growing schools.

Latest Posts

June 15, 2015

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is expected to become a Republican presidential candidate Monday. Education has been a signature issue for Bush. He helped start Florida’s first charter school. He says schools and teachers should be judged on student performance. He pushed for vouchers for private schools. And he spent most of his time since […]

November 17, 2014

In September, Alachua County kindergarten teacher Susan Bowles refused to give a state reading test. She told the parents of her students it was an act of civil disobedience. The Florida Department of Education later suspended the exam for this year. Florida requires that most students are tested every year. Those results help determine which […]

September 23, 2013

The State Board of Education removed the first word from interim Education Commissioner Pam Stewart’s title last week. But Board member Kathleen Shanahan had a strange question for a job interview: Tell me again who you work for? “And I just want to make sure from Pam, that she understands – with full clarity – […]

January 8, 2013

UPDATE: Matthew Ladner, director of policy research for the Foundation for Excellence in Education, responds. The takeaway: “There are very clear signs of aggregate level improvement in Florida, and also a large number of studies at the individual level showing positive results from individual policies.” At the Shanker Blog researcher Matthew Di Carlo reviews the […]

December 18, 2012

Jamille Cunningham’s primary learning tool in her remedial reading course at St. Petersburg College is a computer program. When Cunningham, 20, started the course, the program diagnosed her as weak in all but a handful of reading skills. It then directed her to a series of learning modules focused on skills she needed to improve, […]

December 12, 2012

Citing his experience at many levels of education and his work on new, national Common Core standards, the State Board of Education unanimously chose Tony Bennett as Florida’s next education commissioner. Board members said there will be no learning curve for Bennett when he takes over in Florida. “I think Tony’s experience in being a […]

December 4, 2012

Remember that Reuters story last week which took a longer look at claims that Florida schools have improved under former Gov. Jeb Bush’s leadership? A blogger for the Foundation for Excellence in Education — one of two foundations Bush started to support his education agenda — has responded. Mike Thomas counts the Reuters piece among […]

May 24, 2012

Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney rolled out his education plan Wednesday in Washington, D.C.: More school choice options; reward high-performing charter schools and help them expand; require easy-to-read school report cards. Stop us if you’ve heard this story before. And if Romney’s influences were still a bit cloudy, he made them explicit in his […]

February 23, 2012

The leading advocate for modern, complex teacher evaluation formulas argues they should not be used for their most basic purpose — comparing one teacher’s score to another. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Microsoft founder Bill Gates argues individual teacher scores should not be a tool to publicly shame low-rated teachers. To do […]